This sound is a field recording of a bee captured in a plastic food bin. It was recorded by placing a contact microphone on the side of the bin, which was tracked at 24 bit/192kHz onto my Sound Devices 702 recorder. The bee was hitting the sides of the bin with his body and wings, producing the warbling and percussive hits. I lowered the pitch of the sound by a full three octaves while keeping the duration the same, which still kept a fair amount of dynamics given the high sample and bit rate of the recording. This is dying to be used in conjunction with an actively-automated Doppler plug-in, but a gent has only so many spare cycles in a day.
No bees were harmed in this recording. The little feller had air holes and he was released after 6 minutes, after which he promptly went back to pollinating my backyard.
The Bogen Super Clamp held this OktavaMod MK012 right near the action.
I’ve posted before about photographic grip equipment for use in audio recording, but one little widget rises to the top of that list for me: the Bogen Super Clamp. While intended to position cameras and flashguns in unusual places without marring whatever it’s clamped to, the Super Clamp is super fun for audio, too.
Super Clamps come with a stud that locks into the clamp itself, and ends with a 1/4″-20 screw thread. All it takes is an adapter to change that to a more mic-mount-friendly 3/8″ or 5/8″ thread, and as long as everything’s screwed down tight, you can hang mics upside down, on the sides of vehicles, you name it. Combining them with other accessories like umbrella swivel adapters gives you even more mounting flexibility. The padding on their jaws also makes them pretty gentle on whatever you place them on. Just don’t overtighten them on surface that can’t take crushing pressure, like carbon fiber handlebars.
This mounting held pretty well on relatively gentle roads, and took 3 minutes to rig.
It’s large, bombproof, and heavy, so maybe it’s not something you might casually throw in your field recording bag. But if you want to position a mic somewhere that a mic stand can’t go, or shoot an unusual perspective, the Super Clamp can go there. I’ve used it to attach mics in all sorts of odd places. A great way to get some neat ideas is to watch this Chase Jarvis video, in which he uses Super Clamps and the Bogen Magic Arm to get unique point-of-view shots. Extrapolate by replacing the cameras with mics and it gets interesting.
There are other ways to get mics in weird places, too. The Super Clamp is not unique to Bogen: Matthews makes basically the same thing. There are many smaller jobbies, too, such as Cardellini Clamps, but they’re actually more expensive.
I’ll end this post with a sample of me riding around my street…not horribly exciting, but you’ll get the idea. The clip starts with pedaling uphill, then freewheeling on the flats, the disc brakes kicking in, and finally me clipping out of the pedals. The rumbling noises aren’t traffic, but rather the knobby tires rolling on the pavement.
I live near miles and miles of public open space trails, and there’s a ruined hulk of a blue pickup truck a couple of miles from my house. I see it whenever I hike, run, or bike by. It’s been there for years; someone drove it up incredibly steep fire roads and left it.
Some time ago I dragged a field recorder and a windscreen-protected shotgun microphone up those hills and spent an hour milking the rusting chassis for sound. As you can tell by the picture, it doesn’t look like there was much left, but I did get some pretty cool sounds out of it. Like the cigarette machine percussion loop from an earlier post, I’ve assembled the raw sounds into a drum kit. Here’s a quick sample for your  funky, semi-industrial percussion pleasure. No processing other than pitching 2 samples down a bit in the sampler and some compression and EQ in the final mix; it’s rendered as a usable loop, hence the sudden start and stop.
I'm pretty sure this paddleboat was not intended for wilderness exploration.
Before embarking on mountainous backpacking trips, I like to acclimate to the altitude for a day with some light activity. On a recent, trip, my girlfriend and I wanted to do some lake kayaking. Sadly, the sole outfitter in the region didn’t bring their kayaks that season…when offered a paddleboat instead, we shrugged, thought it was incredibly silly, and said, “Sure!”
The next thing we knew, we were out for four hours in this damn thing. We paddled halfway across an alpine lake, and fought 10-knot wind on the return trip in a craft with the hydrodynamics of a brick. The only way we survived was to sustain ourselves by playing Ghost and Twenty Questions like we were eight years old. From those plastic bucket seats, my ass was complaining for days afterwards.
It was a silly, weird, and fun…and oddly mechanical-sounding. There was this constant thrumming that sounded really regular and sustained for a muscle-powered vehicle. Early in the day there was no wind or chop, so I managed to get several minutes’ worth of clean recordings from this thing. It could easily be processed just a little and recontextualized as a mechanical texture for some device or ambience.
I almost didn’t bring my Zoom H2 on this trip, but I’m sure glad I did. I’ll have more examples from this trip in future posts. (Technical note: Dropping six rechargeable batteries at once into a cold mountain stream does not improve battery life.)
Posted: August 16th, 2009 | Author:Nathan | Filed under:news
Thanks to all the people sending kudos, advice, and good vibes to the World Headquarters here at 101 Lucious Sound Circle. Our gleaming tower of aural awesomeness wouldn’t be here without you. The Management wanted to throw two quick updates out there for Ye Olde Readershippe.
First, Noise Jockey is experimenting with Sound Cloud for audio hosting and playback. Their inline audio player is sweet: you’re actually able to see the waveform, and as readers, you can make comments at any point in time on an audio clip. Holler back if this switch creates any problems!
Secondly, Noise Jockey is officially both an Amazon and a B&H Pro Audio affiliate. I’ve had years of trouble-free, well-supported purchases from both companies, especially the awesome folks at B&H. This means that you can help support Noise Jockey by purchasing any book, audio gear, or other item that is directly hyperlinked from any post on this site.
eBowing a tensioned cable on a fence gate. I mean, doesn't everyone spend their Sundays doing this?
The eBow has been around for decades, and it does one thing only, albeit very well: It excites metal objects with a magnetic field. It’s meant to be used to get synth tones out of guitars, and used right, it can be beautiful.
“Used right” usually doesn’t apply when I get my hands on such things.
Having purchased an eBow this year, I didn’t sit and play my guitar with it. Instead, I switched it on and walked around the neighborhood looking for guitar-string-like objects that might make even more interesting noises.
I came upon a fence gate that had a tensioned cable secured with a turnbuckle (to keep the large door from warping). While I could barely hear the cable resonate, I could also hear the wood of the door vibrating. To my mind, that meant only one thing: contact microphones.
As you can see from the photo, I taped one contact mic to the turnbuckle, and another to the door. I didn’t want one on the cable to decrease its oscillation. I tracked each contact mic to a separate channel on my field recorder.
I recorded about 16 minutes of pretty interesting tones, but the audio levels were quite low. The hums and drones were nice, but I liked it even better when the cable would strike and vibrate against the eBow itself, adding a sound like metal being stretched and warped. It sounded like a much more aggressive Alan Lamb recording. Perhaps someday I can use it expressively as a layer in some transformative or warping sequence, and certainly chopping it up to microsample it will yield untold button sounds, clicks, wonks, vrrrmmms, and other sonic sweetness.
I layered some of the more dynamic, expressive parts into a short clip that you can check out below.
If you read my take on the Fostex FR2-LE, I hope I left you with the impression that is has some incredible strengths, but some physical interface issues that I just didn’t find ergonomically user friendly, and therefore not creatively enabling. I ultimately found refuge in the Sound Devices 702 digital field recorder.
Full Metal (Noise) Jockey: The Sound Devices 702 digital audio recorder.
Sound Devices has taken the world of production audio by storm with bulletproof products whose price, while higher than many consumer models, establishes a new value baseline. Professionals have far more advanced models than this: models with more tracks, time code, and such ( those who can spend 6 bills swear by the Cantar, for example). For me, this unit has hit a sweet spot.
HD Audio (24-bit, 192kHz)
Built to operate in intense heat and bitter cold
Amazing interface for such a complex device
The brightest LED’s I’ve ever seen anywhere
Ultra-flexible signal routing (mono, dual mono, XY stereo, or MS stereo)
Visual output concentrated on only one side
Richly tactile control knobs
All-metal construction
Recording to multiple cards or disks at once
Small (about the size of a hardcover book)!
I’m not sure what to say here that others haven’t alreadysaidelsewhere about this very impressive machine. But upgrading to this level of machine reminded me of several lessons that, despite my advancing years, I still don’t always learn.
Rent the nicer unit before buying the cheaper unit. I spent almost 50% of the cost of the 702 on other recording devices on my way towards it, and I should have rented all of these units, if possible, to really assess their usability characteristics. (On the other hand, the Zoom H2 is ultra-light and can be taken where the 702 can’t, and now I have a backup with the FR2-LE in my gear closet, so all three still do get use.)
Be bold with your research, specifically searching the name of the product you’re evaluating along with terms like “glitch,” “problem,” “error,” and even “catastrophic failure.” These little boxes are all expensive, objectively, so know what you’re getting into. Product and industry forums are your friend.
High price never means perfection. “High price” is subjective, and you can never assume that next level up will solve all your problems. Even the 702 has its quirks, often due to its inherent (usually beneficial) complexity.
At the end of the day, every device – from watches to cars – has its quirks and strengths. Just know what headaches you can live with and which ones will drive you crazy. A consumer’s self-knowledge is as important as feature sets. For me, the (very limited) caveats of the 702 don’t get in my way, which frees my mind to really focus on the recording.
Today’s audio clip is a 30-second snippet of some frogs in a riparian canyon not far from my home. It was an incredibly blustery day, hence the mid-high frequency hiss in the background. I hunched down as best as I could on a tiny dry patch in the middle of a stream. I had to sit for about five minutes for the frogs to start up again, being spooked by my presence. The frogs remained unseen, but one must have been right in front of my shotgun mic, pretty loud and clear.
The Fostex FR2-LE: superb value, challenging ergonomics in the field.
Ah, yes. This little minx of a box was so very enticing and lovely: 24-bit recording, 96kHz sample rate, two solid and quiet mic preamps, pre-record buffers, FireWire, stupid-proof record button mechanism…why didn’t my relationship with the Fostex FR2-LE work out in the long run?
Now, before we begin, don’t let me lead you astray: I loved the FR2-LE…for a while. Many, many people will love it as their one-and-only field recorder, and that’s awesome. It’s an insane value, especially if you get it (as I did) as a refurbished unit or one with cosmetic issues. For the price, you make some compromises – all plastic construction, noisy headphone amp – but in terms of pure value, seriously, nothing can touch it.
I upgraded from the Zoom H2 because the H2’s external-microphone preamp was noisier than a colic child at a wake. Trying to plugging decent mics into it to get a clean sound was a total non-starter. With the FR2-LE (doesn’t that just roll off the tongue?), there was so much to like. For its price class, I got the preamps I deserved – really clean, reasonably detailed. Good times.
My relationship began to sour once I really started getting into field recording in a serious way, and two things arose that were problematic. The first was its insane system of needing to format Compact Flash cards for either mono or stereo. Yes, you had to switch cards to go from mono to stereo. Talk about killing the moment.
But the other was the physical interface. Now’s a good time to remind my readers that I’m a professional interface designer, and I totally realize that price point and device complexity are huge constraints in designing a great user interface for a device as deep as this one. The FR2-LE’s biggest failing is its controls being laid out on two sidesof the device. This device is meant to be used while hanging around your neck; it has LED audio meters on the top, but they’re so pale as to be literally invisible in the daylight. If you want to see the much clearer LCD audio meters, they’re on the side (from your point of view with it around your neck). In order to see it without using another hand, you need to extend your belly, or use a knee, or some other kind of contortion. I’d need to drink a whole lot more beer to get enough of a gut to be able to see this data without A) using a second hand (uh, what if I’m holding a boompole?) or B) looking like a hunchback in need of a pee break. If Fostex fixed those top LED meters, I’d still be using this unit daily. I  bought a signal mirror and gaffer-taped it to the inside of its case, just so I could see those controls without needing to angle the FR2-LE in just the right way.
Invectives aside, after about twenty excursions, I started to realize that this was going to drive me mad. This just wasn’t for me and how I wanted to work, ergonomically speaking. (Again, props to all who love the unit, such as Ric Viers of the Sound Effects Bible and many at the Nature Recordists group.) For now, it sits as a rainy-day backup unit in case my newer recorder needs servicing, or if I need two additional tracks for recording a tricky subject. What’s supplanted the FR2-LE in my daily recording? More on that in an upcoming post.
For this post’s audio clip, here are some cool groaning metal samples from a cow gate in the hills of western Marin County, California. Rusty and resonant, just how I like it!
Small photo light stands provide perfect mic support!
It’s always a struggle to take just enough with you into the field without being encumbered by gear that’s too heavy or too bulky, especially if you need to hike or schlep any appreciable distance to get to your location. My strategy is to ensure that everything I take with me is flexible, modular, and lightweight.
Being an avid photographer, I’ve been a longtime fan of David Hobby’s Strobist blog, where he focuses on maximum impact from incredibly portable equipment. Applying this knowledge to field recording has been not only easy, but some of the equipment can do double-duty. Hobby loves the Manfrotto 001B nano light stand (formerly the 3373) : It’s two pounds and collapses to 19″ in length. I’ve found it to be stellar for small flash units, so I decided to adopt it for audio recording as well.
I decided that the rest of my kit should be about the same length, as it fits perfectly in many bags that I own. I added a cheap On Stage telescoping mic boom, using a 3/8″ to 5/8″ adapter for mounting a pistol grip or windscreen, and a K-Tek KE-79 boompole. Finally, my Røde Blimp windscreen even fits into this range.
This kind of planning echoes some great backpacking advice I once got: buy your pack last, after you have everything else. All of these items now fit handily in a messenger bag or backpack, or you can even use bungee cords to strap it all together and throw it over your shoulder. Most importantly, though, they also fit inside most carry-on luggage. In high winds they might not be perfect, but I’m happy to sacrifice some weight for portability – besides, one can always weigh the stands down with one’s (now empty) bag, the field recorder itself, or your own fat arse.
The photo in this post features two Manfrotto 001B’s in a hyper-reverberant cow tunnel under Lucas Valley Road in Marin County, California…oddly enough, this is one of my favorite places to record (shown here at dawn, when there’s less traffic), and it’s about 1/4 mile away from world-famous Skywalker Sound. I set up my old Zoom H2 and a Røde NT4 stereo mic to compare their sounds. The NT4 (feeding into a Fostex FR2-LE,with which I had a tumultuous relationship) captured the crisp articulation of a rock being thrown in the tunnel (its original subtle phasing now lost to MP3 compression, sadly, but you’ll get the picture).
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/5763727″ params=”show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=ee0000″ width=”100%” height=”81″ ] [Røde NT4 stereo microphone into Fostex FR2-LE field recorder]
The ultimate rule of gathering, be it audio, photography, video, or butterflies, is this: The best tool in the world is the one you have with you. (Not sure who came up with this first, but I heard it initally from Chase Jarvis.)
The humble Zoom H2; even with higher-tech alternatives, still a viable tool.
My first dedicated audio recorder was the Samson Zoom H2, a cheap plastic box packed with four microphone capsules and a teensy screen. Its quirks and dull sound, however, are secondary to its pocket-sized form factor that lets you record stereo (or even semi-surround, using all four mics at once) literally anywhere. I’ve captured tons of sounds with the H2 that I’ve had missed if I carried more “serious” audio equipment with me (which I’ve since upgraded to, and you’ll read more about in the coming weeks).
One such example is this slice of urban ambience, replete with a heated street argument, shot out of a third-story window in San Francisco’s Mission District.
First, Noise Jockey is experimenting with 
Secondly, Noise Jockey is officially both an 
has been around for decades, and it does one thing only, albeit very well: It excites metal objects with a magnetic field. It’s meant to be used to get synth tones out of guitars, and used right, it can be beautiful.
